Bad Religion will be releasing a digital single on June 11th.
Honest Goodbye is taken from their upcoming album New Maps Of Hell which will see them celebrate their 25th anniversary. The single is inspired by Truman Capote’s novel In Cold Blood about the crimes of Perry Smith.
Undercut
Central Station, Wrexham
31.05.07
You have to admire the energy and passion of Bristol boys Undercut. Playing their blend of enigmatic rock to a half full room in Wrexham, they could have been playing a packed out Wembley for all the vigour and unwavering enthusiasm on display.
Looking like a band completely comfortable with each other, they continue to put on a blistering performance that would make even the most experienced of live performers envious. Utterly enthralling to watch, frontman Johnny Benn weaves his way through stomping tracks which swing between 90’s inspired indie and all out rock n roll.
Undercut play every note like they mean it and their flashes of brilliance tonight only hint further towards their overwhelming potential. It surely is only a matter of time before they evolve into a band that everyone is talking about.
It’s The Crimea though that most of the slightly older crowd have come to see tonight. Forming from the ashes of The Crocketts, their music lies somewhere in indie mixed with punk and folk, taking cues from artists like The Pogues. The heat has got up to epic proportions on stage and the band, led by Davey MacManus look to be wilting but with pleasantries out of the way they kick off their show and instantly their music seems to work much better live than it does on record.
There is no jumping around here, no leaping or shrieking, in fact your man MacManus barely moves an inch all night, but what they lack in charisma they make up for in emotion. Refreshingly unpretentious, the feelings and passion in their songs is authentic and although they won’t whip you into a frenzy, it’s an assured, well rounded performance in this intimate environment by ones of the UK’s most underrated bands.
Words and photos by Jane Hawkes
Gallows are running a competition on their myspace to win tickets for their album launch tomorrow [June 5th] on a boat in Central London. There is a Crossfire room on board with Zac and James both playing all night!.
To be in with a chance of winning tickets to this event, take a photo or make a video clip relevant to Gallows, upload the photo to MySpace or the video to YouTube and send the link to rock@warnermusic.com. Make sure you don’t send files to that address, just links!
Winners will be selected at random but must be 18 or over and ID will be required at the door.
Click here for the competition.
Jose Gonzalez has spoken about his upcoming album.
In Our Nature, the follow up to Veneer from 2005, is due out in September and the singer has said that it will “bring out the primitive aspects of human beings.”
He is currently on tour in South America and will be hitting the festivals this summer. The tracklisting for the album is:
‘How Low’
‘Down The Line’
‘Killing For Love’
‘In Our Nature’
‘Teardrop’
‘Abram’
‘Time To Send Someone Away’
‘The Nest’
‘Fold’
‘Cycling Trivialities’
Sufjan Stevens will compose a piece of music dedicated to a “major expressway” in New York.
The singer agreed to write the piece about the stretch of road from Brooklyn to Queen for the Brooklyn Academy of Music which will accompany a “virtual road trip”.
He will compose the music which will be played by a live orchestra during the film’s premiere in November. Stevens’ website said the inspiration of the piece centres around:
“abstract patterns and stories in the snaking traffic, potholed pavement, billboards, badly marked exits, and beautiful city views, revealing what happens when Manifest Destiny converges with urban blight.”
And here’s us thinking it’s just a bit of road.
Michael Jackson has bought the rights to some of Eminem’s catalogue, it has been reported.
According to Yahoo, Jackson bought the rights to Without Me and The Real Slim Shady in a buying spree which including music by Beck and Bjork as well as the soundtracks to The Godfather and Mission:Impossible.
Seems like he’s chosen to ignore Eminem’s pisstake of him in the video for Just Lose It then.
Arctic Monkeys will release their new single on July 9th.
Flourescent Adolescent will come out on CD, 7″ vinyl and 10″ vinyl with the CD and 10″ featuring the tracks Plastic Tramp, Too Much To Ask and The Bakery.
The video for the track has been made by Richard Ayoade, who directed Nathan Barley and will feature Stephen Graham.
Frank and Lags from Gallows are interviewed by Daniel P Carter from the Radio One Rock Show on the Download Festival site. The band are also appearing as special guests for Crossfire DJ’s guests at the festival on Saturday night in the Duracell Powerhouse that will be going off from 10-2am daily. Don’t miss it as the None More Punk Show will be live!
The band have a Boat Party planned for the launch of their album on Tuesday and Crossfire DJ’s Zac Slack and James Sherry will both host the Crossfire room – should be a riot!
Abdominal will be playing two UK shows in June.
The rapper will be playing tonight [June 1st] at Ryde on the Isle Of Wight and will follow that up with a date at the Jazz Café in London on June 4th.
DJ Format’s mate will be releasing his album Escape From The Pigeon Hole on Monday 4th and features production from Format, DJ Fase, DJ Serious and Ugly Duckling’s Young Einstein among others.
Unless you’ve been living under a rather hefty rock for the past year and a half, you’ll need no introduction to Virginia’s latest high quality metallic export.
A cocktail of beer bongs, boogie boards, and some of the most enjoyable thrash-punk anthems since D.R.I. broke the speed barrier have gained the foursome a reputation as one of the most fun and enjoyable live acts on the planet.
From one Ryan to another, Ryan Bird gets the low down from guitarist Ryan Waste regarding the party animals’ recent tour with heavy metal masters The Haunted.
You’ve just wrapped up the UK leg of your European tour alongside The Haunted. Are you happy with how it went?
It was fucking incredible, man! The crowds were really rowdy. Lots of circle pits, stage dives and generally kick ass old-school thrash shit.
With Wolf being a straight forward metal band, The Haunted a Scandinavian thrash band and yourselves a thrash-punk outfit, it was an eclectic line-up to say the least. Did you ever feel out of place?
Musically we’re all very different but as people we got along great. We all seemed to have a lot in common and got on really well personally, so the musical side almost became secondary. I really dig Wolf’s music as well. Those guys were just killer every night.
I saw that in both London and Oxford you managed to get Wolf beer bonging during your set. Have you managed to get The Haunted involved yet?
We’re still waiting on them! As you saw we’ve been showing Wolf how it’s done quite a lot, but The Haunted have promised us that before the tour is out they’re going to get up and do a beer bong onstage.
How did the beer bongs and boogie boards work their way into your routine?
To be honest it’s not something that we actually did ourselves. Fans would bring the boogie boards to the shows themselves and stage dive into the crowd on them. We never really wanted to have gimmicks or anything, but I guess this is one we’re probably stuck with. It’s cool though, it’s all about having a good time.
Something must have gone tits up at some point?
Well, I’ve definitely seen a few things go wrong! Nothing overly serious, just people landing on the barricade rather than the crowd or people not being caught and wiping out, that sort of shit. Beer bong wise the worst I’ve seen is people not being able to finish it. You shouldn’t waste beer!
You come from a very healthy scene back in Richmond. What makes it thrive so much?
I don’t know if anything in particular makes it “thrive” so to speak, but there’s definitely a really good sense of community within a lot of the local bands. Everyone’s very much about helping each other out and getting each other’s backs. It’s a really small city, everybody knows everybody else.
Are there any bands in particular that people should look out for?
There’s a new band that has the drummer from Alabama Thunderpussy in it that are awesome. I can’t remember their name for some reason, but they’re kind of like a really dirty sounding Metallica. There’s also a pop-punk band called Pink Razors who are really good.
Your new album ‘The Art of Partying‘ is out next month. I’m guessing you didn’t have to spend much time thinking up such a title!
Yeah, it wasn’t too difficult. We’ve actually been sitting on that title for a long time, and a lot of the song names as well. We’ve got a load more for the future as well.
What would you say people will find most different compared to your last record ‘Hazardous Mutation‘?
It’s better! As a band we definitely feel like more of a solid unit than we perhaps did when we recorded ‘Hazardous‘. We’ve had a couple of line-up changes since then and things definitely feel better and more positive now than ever before. It’s almost like a completely new band.
Did you approach anything differently in the writing and recording process this time?
We actually demoed the entire album ourselves on an eight-track recorder. We just hammered it out, got everything laid down and used it for pre-production.
It worked really well because it meant that as soon as we got into the studio we knew exactly what we had to do. We got 3 weeks to record the whole thing and did it in 2, so I’d say it worked pretty well for us.
What does the rest of 2007 hold for the Waste?
Um, I think we’re hitting Japan for the first time at some point this year. We’ve been to Australia before which was amazing, but we’ve always wanted to go to Japan. I think we’re also going to do a tour across North America right after the new record is out, and then we should be back in the UK and Europe around the end of summer.
Municipal Waste’s new album ‘The Art of Partying‘ is released on June 11 through Earache Records.
Live photos by Marie GC.